David McKenna was on holiday when he was asked to go on tape for the key role of Piggy in BBC/Sony Pictures Television miniseries Lord Of The Flies.
“You had to say your name, your age, and if you were on a desert island, who would you want to be marooned with?” explains the Belfast-born actor. “I said the West End cast of Les Mis. It took off from there.”
There were many further auditions before McKenna began the shoot, on his 12th birthday, but the now‑14‑year-old was already a seasoned performer. He joined the Belfast School of the Performing Arts almost a decade ago, because his parents hoped the local acting lessons would boost his confidence. There, he played Gavroche in the senior school’s Les Misérables, cementing a love of musicals.
The Marc Munden-directed Lord Of The Flies was his first screen role, but the cast bonded during four weeks of rehearsals and a shoot-long stay at a Malaysian resort, and McKenna learned to master screen acting. Some of the show’s most striking moments are tight shots on his face.
“I’m naturally theatrical,” he explains. “By the time I got to rehearsals, Marc taught me to tone it down. You don’t need to express it; you just need to feel it and think it.”
The advice stuck as tightly as the woollen 1940s-style costumes in the tropical heat, as the young cast travelled around their exotic locations. “Every day would be a new crazy location,” he recalls. “You’d be hiking up mountains and walking against rocky cliffs. We went to a hotel where we got our make-up and costume on, and then we literally went out into the middle of the ocean and arrive on a tiny island.” They would unwind at the end of each day in the pool or feeding monkeys from the hotel balconies.
McKenna was nominated for a Gotham TV Award for outstanding supporting performance. He also took the title role of Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, which opens in cinemas worldwide and on Netflix early in 2027.
“All I can say about that is it was an absolute dream come true,” says McKenna, with a grin. “Greta and the whole cast were just amazing, and I cannot wait to talk about it.”
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